Blowing Out 1973 Candles ...

When Warners Turned FiftyWarner Bros. threw an anniversary party for themselves in 1973. History went back to 1923 (or somewhere thereabouts) but owner of the pre-49 backlog was United Artists, which meant birthday showings of WB classics would have to be cleared through UA. It had been that way since the mid-fifties when Warners perhaps foolishly (no “perhaps” about it) sold their library outright for ludicrously low $21 million. As Greenbriar and others have said before, the cartoons alone were worth that. So long as viewer eyes still beheld the shield on openings of Warner work, they’d figure it all still belonged to the stripped-down company, which had more lately bartered themselves to a buyer top heavy with parking lots and garages, plus funeral homes and other unappetizing assets. Warners did a lookback to show at festivals, saluting the old but emphasizing the new, in this instance Mame, which was in production and sucking up money as only over-produced musicals could.…